Archive for April, 2012

Decisions, decisions, decisions — they make up the foundation of our life. Each of us makes hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them every day. They range from simple to complex, from mundane to exhilarating, even life altering. Without decisions, there would be no action because they are the bridge between our thoughts and emotions, and taking action.

As central and important as decisions are to our work and life overall, one would think they would be fairly easy to make error free. Actually most of them are: what time should I get up, what should I eat, when should I leave for work, which way should I take to work, what lane should I be in, where should I park, etc., etc. Many of these are made with little if any conscious thought. If we had to think about every decision, consider every option, the pro’s and con’s, we would be paralyzed.

Without careful thought and consideration, however, we are more prone to fall prey to one or more of the following decision errors. The list of theories is from www.ChangingMinds.org.

According to the Association for Psychological Science, the journal article, “The Foreign-Language Effect: Thinking in a Foreign Tongue Reduces Decision Biases” suggests just that thing.

“Researchers at the University of Chicago have found that people make more analytic decisions when they think through a problem in their non-native tongue. These findings have implications in many arenas but especially for people doing business in a global economy.” The article can be found in the April issue of Psychological Science,

According to lead writer, Boaz Keysar, a University of Chicago psychologist, “cognitive biases such as loss aversion are deeply emotional responses, and understanding a second language requires conscious thought in a way that processing our native tongue doesn’t. Because we have to think more to make sense of the question when it’s in a foreign language, we automatically think carefully about the answer—we don’t just answer based on our cognitive biases.”

There should, however, be a caveat here. A large body of evidence shows that emotions are extremely important in making good decisions. If instincts or gut feelings that result from our experience are excluded through strict logic or critical thinking, the quality of the decision may well be in jeopardy. In my experience, I have never seen an organization promote “integrated decision making,” which appears to be critical to success.

So, in the absence of integrated decision making, perhaps we would do just as well using the Christie-Davies Theorem.

“If your facts are wrong but your logic is perfect, then your conclusions are inevitably false. Therefore, by making mistakes in your logic, you have at least a random chance of coming to a correct conclusion.”

~ John Christopher Davies (Emeritus Professor University of Reading, UK)